


Were I a Glove Upon That Hand

by Anoriath



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: A.C.Clarke - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Is the inverse then true - that magic is indistinguishable from a sufficiently advanced technology, Other, Physics, or rather abuse of physics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 14:53:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20566196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anoriath/pseuds/Anoriath
Summary: “See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.O, that I were a glove upon that handThat I might touch that cheek!”― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet“And much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring”The Silmarillion: Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age





	Were I a Glove Upon That Hand

**Author's Note:**

> If you have come here from other things I have written, heed the warnings. This is much darker than my usual. 
> 
> For context, this brief piece is set in Tol-in-Guarhoth just after the events from the Lay of Leithian surrounding Finrod's death. 
> 
> For those of you unfamiliar with the source material: Tol-in-Gaurhoth was once Minas Tirith, a fortress Finrod Felagund raised to protect his people, but Sauron overcame the island and took it as his own. Finrod is well known for two things; his use of song as a means of exerting his will and carving stone to create protective places. Sauron was once apprenticed to Aulë the Smith of the Valar and a smith in his own right. 
> 
> Enjoy.

“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.  
O, that I were a glove upon that hand  
That I might touch that cheek!”

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“And much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring”

The Silmarillion: Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age

~oOo~

She sings in oscillations of satellites orbiting infinitesimal suns. 

The hammer hovers o’er metal that burns as a star ripped from the cosmos. The hand that holds the hammer and the form driving its fall curls about it as a dark nebula about the seed of its birth. There hammer and hand move not, but hang in a slow dance upon cosmic winds.

The march of booted feet upon stone pounds as the throbbing of blood in your head. The hammer has fallen but what sparks it threw are swiftly gone. A long thrust of sun then slips through a window and across the floor as Arien speeds in her course across the heavens from the sea on one side and to the horizon upon the next.

The forge now cold and the room lit but by lamplight, a belt of dust and strange ethers orbit about your form and leave their shadow upon your brow. 

And, in the dark, alone, she sings. 

As sharp as a liar’s tongue and as dear as your mother’s voice, she sings your song back to you. 

Once, before you learned her voice, you sang to her of the pull of order from chaos, the steady attraction of diverse forces to bind one form to another. She sings it now back to you to the tune of decay found in the exhalation of imperceptible grains of matter. 

And then, when awareness next sharpens, his hammer now at rest and the metal cooled, the smith’s hand is upon you. 

“Awake!” he has commanded. His voice near and low, you know it for its familiar tones. His hand loosens its grasp upon your jaw to slide upon shoulder and breast with the tenderness of a lover’s touch. The other hand spreads fingers and presses tight to the stone beside your ear. He leans in close and his shadow falls cold upon you. 

“Speak to me,” he pleads, but you cannot. But it seems not to matter, for he sighs and then laughs low. 

“Aye, my love,” he whispers, his joy softening his voice as the flight of delicate-winged insects rising and blinking from the grass upon a summer’s eve. “I am here.” 

His brow falls to the crown of your head and, for long moments, there is naught but the brush of his fingertips along cheek and neck and breast, and the cold breath of the wall at your back. 

“Forgive me for not having seen it,” he says. “I should have known. You were in the right.” 

“For all the millennia we might have.” He jerks away, his voice sharpening. “Still the time shall be too short!”

He slaps his open palm against the stones by your head and, with the force of his will behind it, stars stutter in their cradles in a surge of jagged discord. Vibrating strings of particles flee to grasp for solace in the quiet dark between the arms of galaxies. But soon they slow, failing of their grip, only to recoil and snap back to tangle about skin as the sharp edge of a knife slicing to sinew below. 

“-impatient. Aye, and intemperate, too,” comes the soft whisper in your ear once the pain fades. It then laughs. “But ‘tis you who would insist on tempting me.”

“Come, my love,” he says. He settles again to rest, and you know the whisper of cloth and warmth of a body pressed to your side. “Forgive me my temper. With such inducements I can now provide, how can you not?”

He hums low in your ear and takes to caressing belly and thigh. Stone warms and shimmers but you are yet soft when he takes you in hand. Hardened by both hammer and sword and sure in its skill, his hand tugs and coaxes until it achieves what it wills.

“Oh, aye,” sighs the voice in your ear. “So sweet, is it not?” 

His hand quickens and the slip of skin on skin is a familiar sound, but not the sensation it evokes. No force of mind brings it to focus. It slides from your grasp. Flesh hardens but there is naught of warming of the blood to follow. No flood of pleasure or body’s command to rut. In its place the midday sun soaks into the broad surface of rock and brings it to warmth. A breeze lifts banners to flutter and snap. ‘Tis the hum of purpose and watchfulness. ‘Tis the faces of folk glad at the end of privation to find the comforts of home, and food, and bed await. ‘Tis the wheel of stars overhead and the crack and hiss of sap and ripple of fire upon the hearth within.

“Aye, I know, my love, you have missed this. You were made for other purposes, I know, I know. But I am here. I would give you all that you would need._ I beg thee_, do not deny me.” 

Caught deep in stone, there is nowhere to move, but still you spasm. The ardor of particles align and they are pulled to the center and captured. Somewhat new is born and decay staved off for just a little more. And you are there, as full and far flung as the universe and filled with the crystalline ping of the dust of stars. And then, teetering upon the edge of what is known, the expanse collapses and, of a sudden, you are naught but yourself.

Had he fastened your limbs to four horses and lashed their flanks each with a whip, your bones could not be more stretched. Cold, cold stone creeps about sinews pulled to their limit and holds them fast. Sunk deep, you are more rock than flesh.

“Hush,” you hear and, of the first, feel the whisper of breath that produced it upon your ear. A hand moves in slow strokes upon your belly, trailing warmth in its wake across tender skin and the unfeeling flesh of scars. For you cannot draw in more than a spoonful of air and it is only now you feel the juddering of your heart and desperate strain of lungs unable to fill. 

“You will do yourself a harm should you not settle, Lord Finrod.” 

_One day_, you say when the panic recedes enough that your thoughts are your own, but ‘tis a dry croak, a whisper of wind from between glazed window and sill, between door and the frame in which it is bound. 

A great laugh bursts from him. “He speaks!” he cries. “I had not thought it still in you.”

“Oh, aye,” he says, laughing still. “One day they will come. They will sing my love’s walls to dust. But with it, you will feel the shock of every blow upon her battlements and every strain and tear as they separate stone from stone.” 

His hand flies to your throat and there his clasp clamps hard upon it. He squeezes so that you cannot swallow nor breathe. Your eyes would darken were it not for the heartbeat of stone walls and the seep of air through the chinks in its working. Still, fear is as a lash upon sinews not yet accustomed to your new state, and your throat clicks in vain attempt to draw air.

“It seems she had some fondness left for you. She drank enough of your blood as it spilled in her deepest places to recognize the taste and yearn for it. It may have been you who sung her into being, but it is I she sings for now. So I gave you to her. And when they come for her, you will be her voice. And, then, Finrod, _Carver of Stone_, you will scream.”

With that, his hand withdraws, though lips press warm to the juncture of jaw and stone and the breath from his speech yet slips across your ear.

“So, King Felagund, should you take my advice, until then, rest. We have time.”


End file.
